On 2026-04-08 10:28, alain williams wrote:
On Wed, Apr 08, 2026 at 11:07:42PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
To the best of my knowledge, the recommended installation documents at https://docs.mailman3.org/en/latest/install/virtualenv.html are complete and straightforward for "typical" one-domain installations. No they are not. I struggled, part of the reason is that I am not imbued in the python mindset and the documentation is written assuming that background. So I used the Debian package and a lot of work was needed on top of that. There are still problems: it is a resource hog and parts crash - generating large numbers of incomprehensible emails (I have talked about here, no real help).
The Debian package is inherently old and inefficient.
If you want specific help with the venv setup and such, I am able to try and help you with any specific issues you're having - the venv documentation for installation actually IS pretty straightforward, but you have to work around some specific Pythonisms in the virtualenv. And then do some SystemD magic to make it work.
The amount of actual Python knowledge you need is limited as long as you follow the steps specifically. Reach out independently if you want me to try and assist you more hands-on (schedule time with me, be more detailed in what errors and issues you came up with, etc.)
And if the documentation actually needs rewriting, I can try and take a stab at it.
Mailman2 was a dream, simple to install and just worked. MM3 has some nice features (eg using a SQL database) but is a pig -- far more than it should be. I know other sysadmins who gave up and went with different list managers; if I was starting again I would do likewise. Fun fact, MM2 setup was actually **much** harder than MM3 - trust me, I've had to set up MM2 to debug things for clients of mine who were using MM2, and they're on MM3 now and are worshiping it in comparison to MM@.